Cargo containers are used for the easy transfer of goods from one transportation medium to another. Such as for shipping cargo overseas, to shipping cargo by rail, to shipping cargo by air, then shipping cargo by tractor trailer. The standardization of cargo containers, also known as containerization, has been almost universally adopted. Virtually the entire global freight container market has adopted the International Organization for Standardization (referred to as “ISO”) as its standardization body. The standardization of the containers allows for the stacking of multiple containers upon one another, which allows containers to be stacked as many as twenty containers high.
One of the principal shortcomings found in the use of cargo containers is that the cost to transport a container filled with goods is roughly the same as the cost to transport an empty container. This is because a standard cargo container occupies the same volume whether it is full of goods or not. Due to the large number of containers passing through any given transportation hub, certain regulations require the return of empty containers to their shipping origin.